When I questioned your pupil, under a pine-tree, " My teacher," he answered, " went for herbs, But toward which corner of the mountain, How can I tell, through all these clouds? "
Original Poem:
《寻隐者不遇》
松下问童子，言师采药去。
只在此山中，云深不知处。
Interpretation:
This is one of the most popular poems in China.
The original version of the poem is only twenty words long, but as a lyric poem, it has setting, characters, and plot, and is extremely rich in content, the secret of which lies in the original use of the question-and-answer style. It is not one question and one answer, but several questions and answers. The success of this poem lies not only in its brevity, but also in its lyricism, which is profound in its simplicity. If you are visiting a friend, you will naturally return after asking about his departure. But in this poem, after one question, he does not stop there, but follows up with two and three questions, which are very complicated in words, but simple in writing. The three answers are deeper and deeper, with ups and downs in the expression of feelings.
The hermit in the poem is a true hermit who collects medicine for a living and helps the world to live. Therefore, Jia Island has a high admiration for him. In the poem, the white clouds show his nobility and the pine praises his bones, and the description of the scene also contains the meaning of simile. The author’s admiration for him is not met, which highlights his frustration. In addition, the author, as an intellectual in the feudal society, left the prosperous city and came to this transcendent place among the pines and white clouds to “find a hermit”, the reason is also intriguing and evocative.
Jia Dao (779-843 A.D.) was a poet of the Tang Dynasty, known as “Poet Slave”, who became a monk at an early age and was called Wu Ben. It is said that during his time in Luoyang, when there was an order forbidding monks to go out in the afternoon, Jia Island wrote a poem and complained about it. Later, he was taught by Han Yu and joined the imperial examinations, but failed repeatedly. During the reign of Emperor Wenzong of Tang Dynasty, he was ostracized and relegated to be the chief bookkeeper of Changjiang County in Sui Prefecture, so he was called Jia Changjiang. At the beginning of the reign of Emperor Wuzong of Tang Dynasty, he was reassigned from the position of a staff member of the Puzhou Cang to the position of a secretary, but he died before his appointment.
His poems were mostly about desolation and desolation, and he was good at five rhythms, focusing on the refinement of words and phrases.
Painstaking Poetry
Jia Dao was known for his hard work and seriousness in writing poetry. This is reflected in his own poems, and it was due to his hard work that he was able to make up for his lack of talent, so that he finally won a place in the star-studded poetry world of the Tang Dynasty and left many masterpieces.
Jia Dao’s painstaking poetry was in fact a painstaking effort in refining meaning, lines and words. All these are inseparable from the ideological content and period of the work. First of all, he tried very hard to refine the meaning, so his works have a fascinating mood. If a poem is written in a poor context, tastes like wax, and is boring to read, then it is better to have no poem at all. With a good mood, one must then ensure that this mood is fully expressed in the words and phrases. Every line and word of Jia Island’s poem was refined and revised with great care. However, when he finished the poem, the reader could not see any traces of revision at all, as if it was completely natural and completed in one go.
Posthumous Influence
Jia Dao was widely respected and influential in the late Tang Dynasty. According to Li Zhiwen’s “The Status of Jia Island in the History of Tang Poetry”, there are 38 poems by poets of the late Tang Dynasty in the “Complete Tang Poems”, which greatly exceed the poems by poets such as Li Bai, Du Fu and Han Yu. Wei Zhuang had submitted a petition for posthumously granting Jia Dao and other jinshi and the title of collector and filler, which can best reflect the love and admiration of the late Tang literati for Jia Dao. The above shows that Jia Island’s poems had a wide influence on the late Tang literati’s thoughts and emotions as well as aesthetic concepts, and poets of all generations have acknowledged the fact that Jia Dao is a self-contained poem in Tang poetry.
Jia Dao has been an important influence since the Tang Dynasty. At the beginning of Song, Song poetry did not have its own style, and poets mostly inherited the remaining style of the Five Dynasties, taking the poets of the Middle and Late Tang as the clan, forming the three schools of learning Bai Juyi, Li Shangyin and Jia Dao, which shows the wide influence of him.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
